Oil rock and sands contain a significant amount of the world's known oil deposits, possibly one half or more of the proven reserves. Oil is usually extracted from these sources by several techniques, such as in situ production where heat, hot water and pressure are applied to fracture the rock to release the oil. In the case of sands, the sands are open pit mined and subsequently recovered using copious amounts of water. Natural gas is burned to heat the sand and water treatments. In both of the above mentioned examples, the extraction techniques are environmentally damaging, and in the oil sands example, result in a significant amount of carbon dioxide generation. In addition, the water used to extract the hydrocarbons ends up being a mixture of oil extracts, caustic chemicals, and particulates that is extremely toxic to wildlife. In addition to the aforementioned processes, organic solvents are used to reduce the viscosity of the recovered oil hydrocarbons in order to be able to ship the resulting product via pipelines. The organic solvents are expensive, flammable, often toxic to living organisms, and potentially industrially hazardous.
Large oil sand and rock deposits exist in Canada, the United States and Venezuela. Approximately 20% of the Canadian deposits are recoverable using open pit mining techniques, whereas the remaining 80% is too deep for open pit mining. The Venezuela deposits are too deep for open pit mining and the Utah deposits are in areas that are not accessible to large amounts of fresh water which would make extraction economically feasible. Therefore it is the intent of the present invention to solve the problems of environmental destruction, and lack of water for in situ hydrocarbon extraction of deep deposits, by the use of environmentally safe ionic liquids in combination with electromagnetic radiation.
Another object of this invention is to provide a method of extraction oil from various rock sources by using an environmentally safe ionic liquid that eliminates the use of water and conventional organic solvents.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method of in situ production of oil hydrocarbons from rock sources using ionic liquids and electromagnetic radiation to accelerate the extraction process.
The foregoing and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent to one skilled in the art from the following detailed description of the exemplary embodiments as disclosed herein.